Our Disney Adventure: Picking a Hotel

Before I jump into this week's Walt Disney Wednesday blog post, I do want to share a little bit of exciting, Disney-related news.  Bryan and I were at breakfast over the weekend, and we were talking about our trip (meaning I was talking while he just smiled and nodded).  I asked Bryan if he was excited we were going, as he's been somewhat indifferent and downplaying any excitement he might be feeling.  He said he was definitely more excited than when we first booked our trip.  I'll take that as a win!  At this rate, he'll be excited to go by the time we get on the plane, and if he isn't, then it's a little too late.

To the normal person, picking a hotel is easy: you figure out where you want to go, figure out your budget, then find a hotel.  Pretty simple, right?  As always, it's not quite that simple when it comes to planning a Disney vacation.

The first decision you have to make when picking a hotel is if you want to stay on property or off property.  I've been to Disney World three times in the past, and I've never once stayed on property.  In my mind, I always thought that it was far more expensive.  In a way, this is partially true.  Some of the hotels, such as the Grand Floridian, are horrendously expensive and would easily double or triple our entire budget for the trip.  Other hotels, such as Pop Century, Art of Animation and All-Star Movies, Music & Sports, are significantly cheaper.  There's even a campground you can stay at if you want.  Disney, of course, wants you to stay on property (more money for them), so they provide some incentives, such as free pick-up from the airport, extra hours in the park and a service that will take anything you buy in the park and put it in your room for you so you don't have to carry it around, not to mention free transportation to all the parks.  So, we crunched some numbers and figured out that if we stayed off property, we would either have to rent a car (adding a few hundred dollars to our budget at a minimum) or Uber to the parks everywhere from a slightly significant distance.  Keeping that in mind, it was cheaper to stay on property.

If we had the money, I absolutely would have pushed to stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge.  I've been collecting giraffes for 20 years now, and they've my favorite animal.  What could be more magical than waking up every morning to a safari right outside your hotel window?  Unfortunately, our wallets couldn't make that work, so I didn't even bring it up as an option.  Besides, we'd barely be at the hotel, so it didn't make sense to put that much money into somewhere we'll hardly be seeing.  Also, you can visit any of the Disney resorts during your trip, even if you aren't staying there, so we could still visit Animal Kingdom Lodge.

My top hotel choice within our budget was Art of Animation.  The rooms are designed to look like you're immersed in various Disney movies, such as The Little Mermaid and The Lion King.  The hotel itself looks like an absolute blast with larger than life models of various Disney characters and a Finding Nemo swimming pool.

Photo courtesy of https://touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/hotels/disneys-art-of-animation-resort

I mean, how adorable is that swimming pool?  Art of Animation even has free drawing classes you can take where you learn how to draw a Disney character.  I know we probably wouldn't have time for it, but it still sounded amazing.

Unfortunately, we couldn't book Art of Animation.  Rooms were available, but we had to bump our vacation back a week, and the price of the hotel jumped a few hundred dollars.  It really upset me, but we couldn't stay at Art of Animation.

We eventually had to settle on Pop Century for our hotel.  I know there aren't any bad hotels, they all have their perks, but it really wasn't the hotel I wanted to stay at during our trip.  Pop Century is a throwback to all things "retro" and for kids.  It has giant barrels of Play Dough, barrels of monkeys, yo-yos, etc.  It looks like a child's toy box tipped over all around the hotel.

Photo courtesy of https://www.parksavers.com/pop-century-hotel/

Deep down inside, I know it doesn't really matter where we stay, because we'll be at the hotel only at night, and we can visit any hotel we want (some people even build a resort hopping day into their Disney vacation).  I also know that I'm going to be so excited when we get there that it won't matter what hotel we stay at.  Also, we'll be seeing plenty of giraffes (hopefully) on Kilimanjaro Safaris.

Overall, I'm super excited to be staying on Disney property, a definite first for me.  It's definitely going to add to the immersive experience and get me even more excited for our trip.